An axle tube of a vehicle is attached to the vehicle frame through fixtures connected to brackets attached to the axle tube during manufacture. The precision of the attachment is directly related to the combined precision of the placement of the bracket on the axle tube and the precision of placing the holes in those brackets. During manufacture, the brackets are attached to the axle tube. In this attachment, which typically is a weldment, the brackets cannot be placed sufficiently precisely that prepunched bracket holes can be aligned regularly with the requisite precision. Therefore, it has been the practice in the art to form at least one of the holes in at least one of the brackets after all of the brackets have been affixed to the axle tube. It has also been the practice in the art to form the at least one hole which needs to be precisely placed through drilling, which has proven to be insufficiently precise. This is particularly true when the at least one hole which needs to be precisely placed is a pair of holes which need to be in close alignment. An example of this would occur when the pair of holes are to be placed such that one of the holes is in each of a pair of spaced apart arms in the bracket.